Live 2 Learn

My best friend Kit Glenn died yesterday. He died. Kit was five years younger than I and he died. From lung cancer. Yes, he was a smoker for a large part of his life and now he's gone. I'm not sure why or even if that's important but when I tell someone that my best friend died and he was five years younger than I, people always say, "was he a smoker?" As if that makes my grief any less or as if I don't have to worry since I never smoked? I know I'm being repetitive saying he died so many times, but since our mutual friend Susan called and said, "He's gone buddy," I find that I am unable to believe that he is no longer living and I also find it impossible to use past tense when people ask about him - "he 'is'" in every sentence I mutter - "he 'was'" just doesn't work. I know the stages of grief and I know I'm in denial but it's more than that. The impact that Kit has on my life hasn't ...

People who know me even a little know that I talk A LOT! It's partially genetic - on the Gardner side - and it's also predicted by my MBTI scores - I'm an ENFP with emphasis on the EXTROVERT. So I hardly ever see talking as not appropriate well except in movies, plays and church but even then I can't really be quiet there unless I am thinking about what I will say when the movie ends, or church is over, or the play wraps. But yesterday I learned a new place where talking should be prohibited - in recovery after I have had general anesthesia. I should have been forewarned cause my sister had a bad experience a couple of years ago. When she was in recovery and awake the hospital staff asked her to participate in a survey by answering questions. One of the questions was what she did as a hobby or for fun and she said, "clean commodes!" Now she is a world class cleaner - one of those rare people who can't walk through a room without straightening, pick...

There have been times that I have absolutely loved my job. I've loved it so much in the past that I felt guilty when anyone else talked negatively about their jobs. I have spoken to graduate classes at UT and A&M about Organization Development and what I did in my job and have had people approach me after and say, "I want a job just like yours." You might have noticed the past tense? Yeah, I don't love my job so much at the moment. I don't hate it and sometimes I feel guilty cause so many people don't have jobs - including a bunch of people I had to lay off during cuts over the last three years. Oh hell, maybe I just feel guilty no matter what...but that's a topic for a different day. Today I had a bunch of tests run at Austin Heart Hospital. Routine for me cause I had a cardiac episode 13 years ago. A cardiac episode is like a heart attack but without damage to the heart (yes, I felt guilty then too!). But I don't want to talk about that in this b...

Anyone who knows me probably chuckled when they read that title cause if you know me you have to know that dangerous is something to which I could never lay claim! Seriously I am about the most non-violent, conflict avoiding, peace loving person you could ever meet. I'm a conformist at heart - I hate drawing attention to myself. I follow rules. So how come I say that I'm a dangerous man? Because my relationship with my partner threatens to destroy the sanctity of no less an institution than marriage! If my partner and I would be allowed to marry (we've been together for nine years) the family as we know it as an institution would become a thing of the past! It's very interesting to have this kind of power. I know the power must be real because the voters in a lot of states (Texas included) voted to amend their constitutions so that I can never get married there. Actually I can't even go to a state where Gay marriage is allowed and get married and then come back to T...

Mississippi Burning was a movie produced about a tumultuous summer in Mississippi when three Civil Rights workers were killed and buried under an earthen dam outside of Philadelphia in Neshoba County. Some of the events in the movie were fictionalized or based on things that happened in other counties like the one in which I grew up – Pike County. That summer was bizarre and frightening for a ten year old kid like me. Lying in bed at night I could hear explosions that sounded like thunder but would turn out to be a “Colored Church” hit with a Coke bottle filled with gasoline, it’s “wick” made from a torn cloth inserted in the bottle neck ignited just before being thrown through a church window. A couple of nights Daddy asked me if I wanted to go see the fire and I would ride with him to sit and watch a church burn down to its foundation. Even though he was a product of his upbringing and held racist views himself he would shake his head and say, “This is not right – the Klan has gone...

SHIT! Not that question! I really like Facebook but now it's making me have to come out all over again. I'm 57 friggin' years old and I'm out dammit. Everyone at work knows I'm Gay, everyone at church knows I'm Gay, everyone in my family knows I'm Gay - my partner would add everyone who has seen me knows I'm Gay (here I pause to squint menacingly at him...). BUT and this is a BIG BUT - 98% of the people with whom I graduated from high school don't know. I didn't know I was Gay when we were in high school - wait, not true - I was completely in denial about being Gay. I first "fooled around" with another guy in 5th grade but thought it was a phase. 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th...by the time I graduated high school I could count nine boys with whom I had sex but still I thought I was straight. I had never kissed any of those guys cause that would mean that I was Queer and I wasn't! I had a steady girlfriend - so I was straight - "str...

(Names are changed) A controversial photo appeared in 1989 called "Piss Christ" (click on the title of this post to be taken to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ) It garnered a lot of attention primarily because an anti-National Endowment for the Arts group used it as exhibit one in its attempt to cut or eliminate tax-payer funding of the NEA. The photo was of a crucifix submerged in a beaker of urine - the artist's own urine. The argument was that tax payers who were offended by such displays should not have to have their tax dollars go to fund the work. The NEA really took a beating and was made to look like they were anti-Christian, anti-Christ (double meaning intended), and pro-atheist. The photo had a different impact on me - it reminded me of an event from my childhood that I had suppressed so well that I had never thought of it for almost 30 years. Here's the story as I remember it now. I grew up in a small town where the largest facility owned and opera...